Melting Point
by taranoire
Summary: Time is supposed to heal all wounds, but what if you're already dead? Edward feels as if he's decaying internally, and only a particularly dark brand of alchemy tethers him to sanity. Takes place after Hyperthia's M and Black Ice; not her canon. No slash.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **Yes, I have the authorization from Hyperthia to write this. This is a gift/homage to her, because she's super awesome and makes me want to vomit bloody rainbows when I read/view her shit. Read/view her shit. Particularly if you enjoy this. Her stuff is just like it, but better.

**Warnings (spoilers): **References rape from previous works, violence, gore, implied necrophilia, alchemy zombies, a mental disorder causing Ed to act uncharacteristically (this includes memory loss, disassociation, promiscuity, mood swings, inconsistent patterns of behavior, impulsiveness, and apathy), and implied sexual acts of a bisexual nature.

**Notes (spoilers):  
>-<strong>This is based off of the canons described in M and Black Ice by Hyperthia. It will be completed in _three_ different parts. You don't have to see it as part of her universe if you don't want to.**  
>-<strong>The disorders in this fanfic-of-a-fanfic are real illnesses based off of research and my own experiences. Therefore, the symptoms may seem to blend and be signs of illnesses other than those explicitly stated. Remember that the mind is not easily defined.  
>-Necromancy is a "black art" commonly practiced in some sects of Satanism, as well as other occult groups. It actually has no roots in alchemy, but I thought it'd be an interesting spin.<br>-Ed isn't gay or bisexual in this fic. He's probably straight, as implied in Hyperthia's original canon. In his particular mental state, he's just impulsive and doesn't actually think about who the hell he's doing. This isn't a romance, so it's irrelevant anyway. It's all implied.

**Pairings: **Al/Win, Royai hints. Sorry, slash readers!

This chapter serves as an introduction and a summary of Hyper's canons.

* * *

><p><em>Gather three candles of distinct coloring: a bone-ivory, representing the skeleton of the deceased; a sanguine red, to call upon the rich color of our lifeblood; and a thick black which seems to glow whilst lit. Place at the three points of the interior triangular diagram. The circle must be purified by salts, rosewater, and the burning of wormwood. Do not leave circles unattended. Do not touch circles before the flames of the candles have burned the wick black. <em>

_When your Priest is ready to call upon the unholy deceased, attend to your station, and do not seek the light which flows from his hands. It is the art of dead, and only one who has seen death in His glory can understand its dimensions. _

The cackle of pages beneath his fingertips sent Roy's nerves into disarray, a confusion as chaotic as the atmosphere he centered himself in. The lamp was dim, the windows were black with night, and the fire had burned down to its last embers. Spring's warm darkness had ruined his books, leaving the normally pristine pages thick and crackling.

Dark symbols and insidious markings crisscrossed every page of the tome, notes scrawled in fine handwriting. He had purchased the book several years ago on a sporadic whim, not realizing at the time that it would become relevant to a particularly grisly string of grave robberies. Freshly dug earth, empty caskets, and partially rotted corpses spread out yards away were the only disturbances; nothing was ever touched, except the bodies.

Colonel Mustang decided then and there that his research, however well-intentioned, was not suitable for one man to do in the lonely emptiness of his workplace. He didn't know why he had offered to help Hughes with such a heavy investigation. He sat back in his comfortable suede chair, looked out on the empty desks his subordinates usually occupied, and then let his eyes wander back to the text.

Alchemy was normally a subject he had no difficulty in comprehending. Unlike the abstract arts of philosophy or politics, where the answers rested in interpretation, alchemy functioned by laws that simply existed and needed to be discovered, honed, and converted into the proper discipline by scientists. The current trend, he suspected, had little to do with science and more the morbid curiosities of disturbed men and women who could not control the living and so sought vengeance on the dead.

Traditionally, when one spoke of the taboo, it was human transmutation - attempting to bring something back to life, bind its soul to the plane of existence it originally occupied. Alchemists had by now discovered the taboo was not only unachievable, it resulted in soulless beings called homunculi if the alchemist didn't die from the effort.

Now, the fashionable way of messing with the dead was to leave the soul out of the equation entirely. Necromancers were digging up freshly buried corpses, reactivating the nervous systems and rewiring the brains to perform programmed commands (those commands could not be readily deciphered, and Roy was not ready to lend his theories). So far, the criminals had been unsuccessful, because the corpses never experienced rebirth for very long. By all accounts it seemed they paced for about sixty seconds, moaning intermittently, before collapsing.

It troubled him. And he was not ordinarily troubled.

Frowning once more at the blood-colored arrays that streaked through water-stained pages, he closed the book and replaced it on his office bookcase. He was careful to extinguish the fire as he left, depleting the oxygen surrounding the embers, and shut the door very quietly so as not to disturb his ghosts.

The quiet of Central Command's parking lot was not lost on him. He walked briskly to his car as gnats clouded the spring air. His mouth a thin, hard line, he found his vehicle, keyed his lock, and entered the driver's seat. After that, he did absolutely nothing. Odd words and phrases jumped out at him, branded into his dark eyelids: Rosewater. Dagger. A virgin's heart. And a book, perhaps fictional, perhaps lost to human memory, called the Necronomicon.

His own book of necromancy mentioned it occasionally, treated it like a god in the form of paragraphs and symbols. It could have been a code for something, yes, a kind of password for those in the craft's inner circles. If such a tome existed, with all of the arrays and secrets of raising corpses and calling spirits, he had no doubt that it would have surfaced by then. The military would have sniffed it out and used it to their advantage.

What army was better than a thoughtless horde of the undead? Already damaged, they would not be susceptible to normal wounds. Their nervous systems would operate on self-sustaining energies, a conduit that did not need the entire human body to function. The thought was both frightening and beautiful, intoxicating in its possibilities.

No.

No, he wouldn't be able to do that, not even for science's sake. Even the most despicable individuals considered experimentation and abuse of the dead not to be reckoned with, if only to pacify restless souls. Death was a mysterious, murky water, and alchemists had not ever ventured there and returned.

His pocket buzzed, breaking the eery silence, and he withdrew the cellular device promptly. "Colonel Mustang speaking."

"Roy, it's me," Maes Hughes said on the other end, his voice quiet and telling. It was late and the rest of the house was asleep, though no one could say how peacefully in these dark times. "Are you still at the command building?"

"I was just about to leave. Is there any information you wanted before I did?" It wasn't uncommon for Hughes to have him go back and pick up some obscure title for his investigation, or write a last-minute inquiry. From his friend's tone, he knew the matters about to be discussed were serious and confidential, unrelated to lighter (and more annoying) topics such as Elysia's latest stroke of genius.

"No," Maes said, "I thought I should tell you that we've gotten a lead on the body-snatchers. We found a website, pretty obscure, that sells occult materials. Most of it seems harmless. I asked Ed, and he said most of the arrays in their spell books are total bullshit, incomplete circles that call on fabricated bases."

"And yet you still think it was necessary to notify me."

Maes hesitated. "Some of them are legitimate. And the site is connected to a store midtown. They're not explicitly fishy and there's nothing wrong or illegal about selling books like this, but I've been wondering what we could uncover from the people in the area just by going under."

"Let me guess," Roy said calmly, staring out at the swarm of gnats around a street lamp, "you want to borrow one of my men for your investigation."

"Well, I promise they'll come back in one piece. Pretty please?"

The colonel sighed. To be perfectly honest, none of his men were particularly expendable at the moment, and those that were weren't exactly qualified for this sort of acting work. Lieutenant Hawkeye was serious enough to fit the mold of an occultist, but she would wrinkle her nose at the thought of cooperating with those who disrespected the dead; Falman would ask direct questions, leading to the jeopardy of the mission; and the rest of his command would get caught up in the charming features of lady patrons, no doubt.

"Who did you have in mind?" he asked, not bothering to disclose his personal thoughts.

"Lieutenant Havoc would be best," Maes said, before pausing. Then, hesitantly, "Ed wouldn't be a bad idea, though."

"Absolutely not!" Roy was quick to object. He didn't realize how loud his brain had planned that outburst to be, and recomposed himself before Maes could respond. "He's had enough of the dead for one lifetime. That's the paternal side of the equation. The commanding officer in me does not believe he would be able to pull off a convincing act without taking his emotions out on everyone involved."

"I understand," Maes said, though his tone told Roy he wasn't conceding anything. "He's been through a lot lately. But he's done field work before. He's experienced in that area. He knows the arrays, the way these things work. He'd be able to find out if something was wrong. And he's a great demographic for cults - young, aimless, scruffy-"

"Of course he's perfect for the job," Roy agreed, "but that doesn't mean he's mentally fit for carrying out the task." He scrubbed his face with his free hand, rubbing the exhaustion out of his once flawless features. His skin would be wrinkled and bleached white by tomorrow morning, all because of a miniscule adolescent. "How is he, by the way?"

"Ed?"

He rolled his eyes. "The Fuhrer."

"About as well as you could expect," Maes said, revealing nothing further. Roy absolutely despised the way he had to interrogate the man for details. Then again, he was the same way, and had infuriated the Elrics on several occasions with similar tactics. That was a long time ago.

"Is he sleeping?"

"Soundly."

"Is he adhering to his medications?"

"When he doesn't forget what day it is."

Roy sighed. "Have there been any...incidents?"

'Incident' was a euphemism for a peculiar string of behaviors the Fullmetal Alchemist had been exhibiting lately. They varied from day to day, but the word itself covered an array of them. The colonel hated treating Edward's mental state so clinically, but no one could keep themselves from doing it; they had no other ideas about how to relate to him, now that they knew.

It was a belated knowing, a negligent knowing, and that was an inferior way of knowing things. When Ed first told him, allowed soiled memories to breathe air, Roy had found solace first in denial, then horror, and finally a haunting light of truth. His fingers had itched to burn and so he had satiated that need, torching the Tucker mansion and all of its terrible history.

He regretted it, later, because it seemed to have left a vacuum in Ed's mental awareness. Ed didn't know what to do with himself, how to think or feel, all because the building he had been tormented in no longer existed. It was as if all of those horrible feelings inside of him were being invalidated, ignored, in the sweep of hot embers and ash.

But the building wasn't really _gone. _It still stood, black and rotting, on the same lot it had burned on. No one wanted the land. No one wanted the mansion. Its history had painted itself across the newspapers for months now, notorious and smeared in black ink, a house full of rape and darkness and foul experimentation. There were those who claimed they could hear children's voices, near the iron gates.

"No," Hughes said at last. "A few little bumps, here and there, but he's getting better. He'll be fine."

The colonel couldn't discern whether the man was lying, but assumed he had it under control. Edward Elric had always been a handful, damaged and impulsive, and the situation was no different now. He exhibited his emotions badly, that was all. He could still function as an officer, however limited in his jurisdiction, and again limited in how much Roy allowed him to see. Years ago, he would not have hesitated, for example, to send Ed to infiltrate the necromancers; now, he kept him shielded from anything remotely draining.

Ed was not a child. He knew that. But there was a wall there, made of brick and stone, that prevented him from seeing the boy as the young man he was. When he looked at Ed, now, he saw a scrawny twelve-year-old, broken and trapped by the very people meant to protect him. He saw a victim, and it was stupid, and it wasn't Ed's fault, but nonetheless it was what it was.

Just as Roy was about to throw out a reluctant wish for a good night, he heard a harsh, muffled scream on the other end of the phone line. His blood turned frigid in his veins, mind reeling from circumstances beyond his control. He didn't like not being in charge of a situation, didn't like not knowing how to solve a problem.

There was nothing left to burn.

Maes sighed. "I'll take care of him. You go home and sleep."

"Wait, before you go," Roy said hurriedly, hair prickling at the base of his neck from the tormented sound of Ed's nightmares, "a book. Whoever you send, tell them to look for a specific book. The Necronomicon. It should be older than thirty years." He thought back to the date his own tome had been published, and decided that the true Necronomicon referenced would need to be older.

"Sounds like dark stuff, but a good lead. Done."

* * *

><p>White noise crept like caterpillars in his ears.<p>

A chill breeze swept across his very naked body, slick moisture aiding the sweep of air in freezing him solid. His lashes were glued shut, sticky with he tried to move his hands to investigate, to pry his crusted eyes open, he found that unforgiving metal chains held them strong. The manacles cut into his wrists, blood leaking from deep wounds.

He forced his eyelids wide, blinking back painful grime, and when he did he regretted waking up. A familiar sickness broiled in his stomach, the muscles of his abdomen clenching under a smear of bright red blood. _His_ blood. The residue of semen and iron and and unforgiving shine.

Pain, hot and sharp, blistered his insides. His throat. His mouth tasted sour, vomit and acid and screams. He had expelled all of those and he still hadn't been able to prevent it from happening. Most of the strength had been beaten out of him in a crescendo of violence.

"Awake?" Tucker asked, appearing like a ghost beside the four-poster bed that smelled of mothballs and decaying dead. His glasses were opaque, glinting with a firelight that wasn't there. "You're throwing up, Edward. That isn't good, not good at all."

Ed tried to open his mouth, but no sound came out. Vocal cords incapable of vibrating a pitch. His arms twisted but the metal shackles kept him still. When Tucker revealed a knife to him, he went limp, body a trembling mass of confusion and fear. He kept his eyes on it, the sharp edge, the reflection of a tear-streaked, blood-soaked, sex-abused face staring back.

"Doctor says that when children are ill, the sickness needs to be bled out of them," Tucker said, smiling. "The four humors aren't in balance. Black bile, yellow bile, red blood, and phlegm. Don't squirm."

Ed squirmed.

He watched. Voiceless, helpless, as the blade was driven into his body, over and over and over again. He heard it, he felt it, sticky fire, the knife digging at his intestines and liver and lungs and heart. The slop of blood and flesh with every thrust. Like sex, it was a matter of timing, or repetition, of keeping the pace. And Tucker groaned as he did it, moaning and tossing his head, fingers shaking in the warmth.

Ed squirmed, but he couldn't get away, was drowning in blood. It forced its way up his throat, leaking from his mouth in chunks of tissue. His eye sockets were bleeding. His nose. His ears. Every orifice excreted until he was a writhing mess of blood-soaked flesh, more a murder victim than a human body, more a bed for a scarlet river to run its rapids across.

He could no longer hear himself screaming, so thick, so thick, so thick. He was drowning in the oxygen-drenched fluid that had been in his body only moments ago.

His eyes widened in his skull as a wall of loud heat flushed his face. The opposite wall became crumbling fuel for blistering flames. Fire multiplied in a circle around the chamber, but Tucker was impervious to it, impervious to the heat, or the way his skin began to peel away from his bones, or the way his eyes went milky - they were burning alive -

_"No!"_

An aching sort of pain shot through his chest as he landed on something hard. He sobbed and twisted, panicking, as he felt hands closing on his arms. A thin material was restricting his movements, he was wrapped like a parcel-

"Ed!" a demon called. "Ed, calm down! You're okay, you're okay!"

He took in a deep, shuddering breath, slowing his frantic movements just enough to get a sense of where he was. He could smell his own sweat, salty and bitter, dripping down his body as if he had bathed in it. The chains were gone, his flesh was whole, the walls were not caked in ash but bright paint. Night's shadows draped the guest bedroom in darkness, and though Ed expected the shadow of armor, Alphonse was happy and ignorant miles away.

Ed hated him for it, and despised himself for his hatred.

He flinched when flesh touched his cheek, but it was only Maes Hughes' hand brushing away cold, drying tears. "What was it about? You remember?" the man asked gently, helping to untangle the damp sheet from Ed's body. He had fallen off the bed in the middle of his nightmarish thrashing. It should have been embarrassing to be found like this, but Ed's fear was subsiding into a cold nothingness he was well accustomed to.

Ed shook his head, hyperventilating, trying to catch his breath between involuntary sobs. He could hear his heart beating up against his ribs, clenching and sending blood through his capillaries. Maes Hughes was ever-patient, careful in his ministrations, making certain to withdraw his touch if it was unwanted. They all believed he was delicate.

"He was killing me," Ed managed to whisper, not needing to elaborate further on the identity of his assailant. He accepted Hughes' offered embrace, too cold and weak to fight the customary. In the dark, he felt like a shadow himself, open and childlike. "It was just like before and then he tried to _kill _me."

There was no way Hughes could respond to such sentiments without offending his _delicacy_ or his temper, so Ed did not blame him when he said nothing more. Actions spoke louder than words, and Ed believed that the tight, trembling hold was probably better than any crap advice his military-compensated shrink could ever give him.

Nightmares weren't a novel concept to Edward Elric. He'd been having them for years, touched by the tendrils of his subconscious when he was most vulnerable. But only recently had they taken on this inherently grotesque edge.

The Gate didn't frighten him as much anymore. It was still mysterious, called out to him, and he never wanted to return, but compared to meeting Shou Tucker nightly, he almost missed it. The Gate cared only for tolls. At least in such a scenario he knew what to expect. At least he had been able to beat it, and there was no risk of it ever coming back for him.

He simply needed to stay far away from circles. Shadows. Shapes.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Maes asked him, his voice paternalistic and soft.

No, he didn't want to _talk about it. _He was paying some bastard three grand a month to talk. While he was in this place, this shelter, this ephemeral mockery of domesticity, he wanted to spend it in absolute silence. "There's nothing to say."

* * *

><p>Ed remembered the night Colonel Mustang walked into the Hugheses' town house, smelling of burned leaves and caked in a batter of sweat and soot. He had stood on the threshold, breathing heavily, his gloved hands shaking at his side. He announced to the family, and mostly to Ed, that he had just committed arson on military property and he expected to be taken in.<p>

Ed had only just woken up from - a dream, and the moment he saw the eccentricity, the dull focus, and the heat of Mustang's eyes on his own, he knew. And he said nothing. Asked no questions, let the dull ache of acknowledgement begin to eradicate the sharp wounds of yesterday.

"Which property?" Hughes had asked, always the methodical one, ready to make the appropriate phone calls. Take damage control.

"Irrelevant. No one will miss it." Mustang went quiet, fists trembling. Then, "Ed, is there anything I can do for you?" The coal-fire stare dampened in the mists of some strange emotion Ed had never before seen on his commanding officer's face. And Ed had known, even then, that he would need to become accustomed to it. Mustang was _sorry. _So, so sorry.

"I wanted to kill him," Ed said, in the present, lounging haphazardly on a fine leather futon. The ceiling was the most fascinating object in the entire building, and Ed pretended he was speaking to it instead of a pseudo-professional. "No. Actually, I don't know what the fuck I wanted. He didn't even ask, and at the same time, I - I know he did it because..."

The talents of articulation left him.

The man he couldn't see cleared his throat. "Because?"

Ed hesitated, lips parted, and then let his words go. They weren't precious enough to keep. "Because I guess the bastard wanted to let me know he'd try and do anything for me. Now, at least. Didn't give a fuck then when the evidence was right _there_."

Rat poison. Frequent absences, missed calls. Bruises and flinching and pleading expressions. Piss stains, blood stains, the smell of sex that he intentionally left behind on his skin. Just once. Just _once _and no one had questioned it, no had questioned why his throat was raw and his hair was unwashed and that he walked poorly.

No one -

He stopped his thoughts before the chain unleashed itself. If he thought too much, his heart would race, and he would lose control.

"Do you believe in ghosts?" Ed asked, regretting the words even as he spoke them. The therapist (his occupational title would have been intimidating if only for a conveniently placed space) looked up over his scrawling notes and medical jargon that probably meant even less to him than it did to Ed.

"What makes you say that?" Dr. Rhodes asked carefully.

Ed shrugged. "Because - I think I do."

"You believe in ghosts?"

He licked his lips. They were dry and cracked. "Yeah."

Dr. Rhodes frowned. Everyone frowned, when he brought the topic up. Edward Elric was supposed to be a scientist, one well-acquainted with the dead and what constituted a soul. He wasn't supposed to be infatuated with debunked, paranormal concepts. "What does this have to do with you and therapy, Fullmetal?"

Indeed. Probably nothing, maybe something. Maybe it was the key to the whole mess. He was broken, everyone thought it from what he could see in their eyes and body movements. He paid a lot of attention to things like that, now. The language of the unspoken. The quiet emotions of people. He understood them, but he didn't care about them.

"Well, I've been thinking. Maybe I died there. In that house. Part of me got killed." Ed forced himself to look away, not wanting to see how crazy the doctor knew he was. "And that night when I got in that car accident. Maybe I got killed then, too. And that made everything all screwy, a lot of dead mes all over the place."

Come to think on it, there were probably more than two dead Ed's; one in the Gate, one in his mother's basement, one in the graveyard, the warehouse, the sewer, every place he had ever stepped and scraped death. It fed on him little by little until he became the fuck-up he was.

"Mr. Elric," Rhodes began, voice calm but his expression clearly puzzled, "things feel screwy because your head isn't in the right shape right now."

"Then how come I never had a nightmare, never thought about what Tucker did to me, until I slipped on that ice? Why did that trigger all this stuff?" He was tempted to chew on the end of his ponytail, his fingernails, his black t-shirt. Shut up, shut up, shut up. "I've been through loads of shit and I could forget about what he did to me. But one little accident, something normal people go through every day, and I snapped-"

"You were severely injured in that crash," Rhodes said, back to visually ignoring him. He was flipping through his notes, towards the way back, back when Ed was four months younger. Winter time. When he'd been a broken eggshell people kept stepping on. "Let's see, here. Hypothermia, shock, and under the influence of drugs at the time. Your brain was probably physically wounded, don't you see?"

"I know the fucking scientific explanation," Ed growled, "I don't care. I don't care. I'm asking you if you think someone can die more than once. I think they can and I think they stick around after they do, so answer the fucking question."

Dr. Rhodes cleared his throat. Apparently, he wasn't used to his patients being so volatile and obviously fucked up, but he was being paid well and Ed didn't give two shits if he bruised the man's intellectually explained feelings.

"I don't feel comfortable discussing this with you, Mr. Elric. I believe it would encourage other delusions, and given your extraordinary history with supernatural traumas, I'm afraid you wouldn't be able to distinguish your imaginings from reality." He wrote more, his forehead wrinkling into several ugly fleshy lines. "I'm ordering a refill for your prescription, as well as a new medication."

"The fuck?" Ed flew out of his chair, fists balled and throat clenching at the thought of having to swallow more shit he wish he didn't know the chemical formula of. "For what? What is it this time?"

"Just an experimental treatment phase - two weeks. If your associates feel it isn't working for you or you don't like it, I'll take you off of it." He waved a hand, flipping pages, signing his name. Flippant prick. Ed wanted to shove pills down his throat, wanted to see him gag, get him so dependent on them he had to-

"What's it for? Anxiety, depression, what?"

"Oh, it'll help with those, don't worry," the doctor said, and Ed tried to ignore the familiar pangs of abandonment. Of being cast aside and neglected in favor of a happier picture.

* * *

><p><em>Patient displayed bipolar emotional responses in session, beginning with expressionless and reluctant participation and followed by frustration. Patient consistently insists that therapy isn't necessary, and yet schedules appointments and calls emergency hotline frequently. Patient describes withdrawal symptoms inconsistent with prescription, and it is probable that the patient is abusing his dosages. <em>

_Additionally, patient showed signs of emerging psychopathic disorder. Delusions present as well as paranoia and a reluctance to acknowledge illness. Based on incidents described by his current guardian, I suspect borderline personality disorder as an accompanying illness to the earlier PTSD diagnosis._

_Prescription for anti-psychotic medication forwarded to pharmacist.  
><em>

* * *

><p>"It was fine, I told you that," Ed said into the cell phone. The bus was crowded and full of quiet, working class men and women. Ever since the slip on the black ice, he hadn't touched the wheel of a car again, and he doubted he would for a while. "Hughes, I got it all taken care of."<p>

"When's your next appointment?" Maes asked on the other end of the line. He sounded tired from a hard day of military bureaucracy, but Ed didn't pity him because Ed didn't pity anyone anymore. Some irrelevant case about dead people, anyway. You couldn't hurt the dead.

He wished he was dead.

"Two weeks from today. Filled my 'scrip. Should be there in like, an hour." A clap of thunder and an ensuing curtain of silver rain made him groan. "Make that an hour and a half. We're gonna be late." After a terse goodbye, he shut off the device and shoved it in his pocket along with the bag of drugs he was legally allowed to carry. At first, the Hughes family hadn't trusted him to get his medication on his on, but that had changed once Elysia started preschool.

He had been living with them for about four months now, alone, because Al was off boning Winry in Resembool. He felt as if he was leeching, and he was, but that didn't stop their generosity. They told him he had a roof so long as he needed one, and given the state of his head recently (the white noise, the fuzz, the blood-soaked nightmares) he had a feeling that might be a while. Elysia herself had gotten so used to his presence she included him in crudely drawn "family portrait" pictures.

She always drew him smiling. That was kind of...cute. He smiled at the rain, the flickering lights of traffic.

After a minute or two he couldn't remember what he was happy about, and for some reason that made an uncomfortable shitty feeling bubble up where his stomach should be. The smile died and dripped down his face and suddenly the traffic lights and rain seemed a lot more menacing than they should have.

Rain meant less traction, which meant the tires could slip, which meant the bus could hydroplane, which meant it would crash, which meant it would topple, and all of the tired old men and women and rare hand-carried infants would be crushed up against the windows and burned as gasoline rushed out of a crumbling engine up in smoke glass pavement broken bleeding bodies charred and rot.

He could feel his heart thudding against the fabric of his t-shirt, could hear his breath as it rushed out of his chapped lips. He thought about the rush of panic and tried to remind himself that it always felt the same and he always ended up okay, so there was no reason to give in to the adrenaline and fear.

But he always gave in. What if he didn't give in? What if this was a trick? (Whose trick?) (God?) (Did God hate him?) What if, all those other times, he didn't have to give in to his panic, didn't have to succumb to blind fear, didn't have to count to ten, fifteen, twenty and then now he did because it was a game? What if he didn't give in this time, and the bus crashed from his negligence?

"Weak little boy."

He opened the bottles and fished inside and popped a pill in his mouth, swallowed it dry (not much saliva). He rested his head against the cool metal wall of the bus seat, closing his eyes and waiting for the placebo effect to take its course before the drug itself could drag his heart and his eyes to sleep. He counted to ten.

He was still scared. (Of what?) (Of what.)

Took another one. It was like popping candy, a plastic pez dispenser. Three capsules later and he thought he might be able to get up and walk without imminent catastrophe occurring, so he grabbed his bag and his cell phone and he walked up to the bus driver and waited with the rain pelting the roof for the woman to realize he was there.

"I'm getting off here," he stated quietly, not knowing where he was but certain he didn't want to be on a ton of steel and metal going at forty miles per hour in the rain. His thoughts were like bullet trains, long and catastrophic and fast, winding around and he thought he saw galaxies and he thought that maybe if he thought the right thought he would die.

"You're gonna catch your death, honey," the driver said, but obediently pulled over and jacked open the doors.

As soon as he was on the sidewalk and the cold rain was dripping down his face and the bus was an exhaust cloud away, he realized he had made a really unforgivably stupid decision. He kicked the pavement and cursed his idiocy before identifying his surroundings, only to regrettably come to the conclusion that he had no idea where the hell he was.

The lower-density urban district seemed empty and dark, most of the shops closed or catering to the seedy. Cobblestone streets reminiscent of Old Central matched nineteenth century brick buildings, small alleyways crunched between like dark reminders of serial-killer legends. He was somewhere on the west side, in the part of Central visited by affluent and hoodlum alike.

Jazz music and smoky vocals echoed from some obscure cafe, so he followed the noise, partly because his medication was kicking in and partly because he had _no fucking clue_. Logic told him to call Hughes, because Hughes knew everything there was to know about the damn city, but Ed had abandoned logic a while ago. Logic told him the probability of someone dealing with _that much bad shit _was unheard of, so logic could fuck itself in the ass.

He pushed open the coffeehouse door. The smell of cream and beans and college students. Dead eyes looked over his dripping form, the soggy bag in his hand, and didn't blink. He heard the press of lips against a microphone, and saw the singer was stoned out of his mind, his eyes closed as he perhaps pretended he was serenading a person who hadn't broken his heart or left him to-

'llbuyyouadrinkIdon'tdrinkyoudon'

When he woke up, four hours had passed and he was sprawled on a bed that smelled like garlic and body odor and he was completely naked and he had no idea how he had gotten there. The situation was familiar, because it had happened before, different rooms and different sleeping naked figures next to him. But the story was always the same, and indifference took refuge in the part of his mind that should have been panicking.

He grabbed his cell phone off the bedside table, rummaged around for his medication, and discovered that the bottles were completely empty.

* * *

><p>Lots of things happened between waking up and sitting down to eat breakfast. He took three buses to find his way back to a familiar neighborhood, and walked the rest of the way. When he arrived at the Hugheses' townhouse, he realized too late that he was soaking wet and there was a very pissed off family waiting for him in the kitchen.<p>

"I can explain," was met with Major Hughes telling him to shut up and dry off, and followed by Gracia tentatively asking him where he had gotten his shirt because she had never seen it before. Ed had no answer, not one he could say in front of Elysia, whose dewy green eyes searched his as if he could do no wrong.

There was lots of yelling. And then-

"Why did you just hand me a fork?" he asked from where he sat. He had been studying one of the pictures on the wall, the beautiful colors hypnotizing in morning's frail light, when Maes broke him out of the reverie. Patronizing.

The man's forehead wrinkled. "Well, I doubt you'd want to eat your eggs with your fingers."

Ed felt the confusion on his face, and looked around the room in a heavy daze. Elysia sat just beside him, eating chunks of scrambled egg, scrutinizing him with most of the food falling out of her mouth. The rest of the family seemed to know what to do, seemed to have figured it all out, and here he was, baffled by the piece of metal known as a fork in his hand.

"Shit," he mumbled. "Right." He pretended to eat by pushing the eggs around his plate with the...fork.

"You said a bad word," Elysia said, appalled and excited at the utter coolness of profanity.

Ed shrugged. "I'm teaching you new vocabulary. You're gonna get loads of friends."

"Not the right kind," Gracia said disapprovingly.

"Sorry." Ed began to use the fork for its intended purpose, spearing the eggs as if they were the objects of his nightmares. It was kind of a comical picture. Being raped by eggs. He snorted a little at that, returning to picking at his plate when the family stared at him. "So," he spoke up, "guess I don't have to take any shitty pills today?"

Maes nodded, swallowing his breakfast. "I called your psychiatrist and explained what happened. You're out of luck this morning, but this afternoon we'll get another refill. Which I will be locking away in a pantry where you can't get at it."

"Good idea," Ed said, a little disheartened by that. What if he had a freak-out? What if he really needed to calm down? It wasn't like he couldn't break a kitchen cabinet if he had to, but he respected their property, he supposed. Didn't he? Didn't he respect them? "I'm going to be vomiting all day." Fuck.

"Well, you'll deserve it." Maes cleaned his plate, and presumably got up for another helping of his wife's cooking. "Next time you have a panic attack, call my cell phone. Don't do whatever the hell that was last night, overdosing before deciding to spend the night at a stranger's house." His coloring darkened at the last part, and Ed knew they'd be discussing the matter in-depth when Gracia and Elysia weren't around.

Gracia's cool eyes were full of sympathy.

A half-hour later, Ed was in the passenger's seat of Hughes' car. The man stuck to side streets and slower lanes to appease the teenager with a chronic fear of moving vehicles. And as said teenager suspected, the ride to Central Command was a lecture, not a pleasant Sunday drive.

"Did you have sex?" Hughes asked, voice clipped and emotionless. This was an interrogation, and one the man was taking very seriously.

Ed shrugged, the word bringing up all kinds of lewd connotations. He wished it didn't exist. "I don't even fucking remember," he said honestly. Something must have happened between him and Nameless Male, but there hadn't really been a mess, that he could recall. Nothing. Blank. "Probably."

He had before, with strangers, with other people, but he never got anything out of it. He never came. Women didn't like men who couldn't get erect, but some men didn't care that he just lied there. He liked getting other people off. Which was weird. He knew it was weird. Just, the way he could control people like that. Control.

_"You'll never get a girlfriend that way."_

He blinked. "Yeah, I think we might have."

Hughes cursed, turning briefly to face him before directing his eyes back to the road. Like he couldn't bear looking at him. "Damn it, Edward. You see what happens when you overdose? Things get fuzzy and you go home with people like a stray puppy. You don't know who they are or what they'd do to you. Even if they didn't want to hurt you, they could have chlamydia or AIDS or-"

Ed clenched his fists. "What, isn't this what normal teenagers do? Isn't this what you guys want, for me to be normal? For a while everyone was like, oh, why doesn't Edward Elric fuck around, he could have anyone he wants, right? And now all of a sudden I'm _sick_?"

"This isn't normal. You don't even actually know any of the people you're letting do this kind of thing to you. And," he hesitated, licking his lips, "given what you've been through, I don't know why you don't understand the risks."

That. _Hurt. _

"Don't understand the..." Oh. He understood. He knew. "Because I got raped, right? I should know better, because it's already happened to me, and I should be smart about this shit. Hell, maybe - maybe I should just stop going out in public, too. Maybe I should start wearing a paper bag over my damn head."

"Ed..."

"No, _fuck_ you, let me talk!" His clenched fist somehow escaped his control and struck the door with a bang. "I mean...sorry, no, _shit. _I don't even know. This is just different, okay? That was him, that was him coming after me, when I could do nothing, when I just had to sit there and let him do what he wanted because I couldn't fucking move. This now? This is me putting myself out there. If it happens - if it happens again, maybe I'll have some control."

"That's not _safe_, Ed."

"I know it's not safe," Ed spat, blinking back hot tears, "I'm not _stupid. _Just, maybe if it happens again I'll be able to stop it this time because I'll be kinda expecting it. Maybe I can save myself. No one else has ever helped, they just stand around to bury the bodies, I've gotta save myself. I can't die again."

Hughes was quiet. Because he didn't know what to say, because he was like everyone else. Edward fucking Elric, delusional psychopath whose own brother pretends doesn't exist.

"...I'm sorry," Ed said, softly. Forehead against the cool, rain-spattered window. "I'm really sorry."


	2. Chapter 2

The more he learned, the less he wanted to know. It was like studying fire alchemy all over again. They were similar arts, forbidden and destructive, rooted in myth and compounded in fact. In the wrong hands, they could be apocalyptic, giving rise to incineration or armies of the dead. To prevent this in modern society, government controlled and tabulated all practitioners of alchemy, no matter if the user was a novice mending teacups or a powerful visionary who could mold mountains from ocean beds.

The military knew of four basic alchemical currents: earth, water, air, and fire. Together, these could be manipulated and combined with biology for all sorts of ingenious purposes. The first chimeras, medical treatments, human transmutation itself - all under a quadratic blanket. Necromancy, in myth-lore, seemed to identify with biological alchemy in its activation of dead nervous systems. But how did the body sustain itself after activation? Perhaps that was what the current grave robbers were trying to figure out.

Logically, Roy theorized that pinning a soul to a corpse would sustain it for longer than the body on its own. The soul fed the body's circuits, the soul allowed the alchemist to use energy for the purpose of transmutation. Either the necromancers hadn't thought of this, or they weren't yet willing to try. It was as risky as murder, and the state of a corpse meant that the body would inevitably die again, destroying the soul attached. They were willing to dig up bodies, but not kill.

The office was quiet at this time in the morning. Riza Hawkeye was tactfully silent, as usual, busy in her filing administrations, and the rest of his team were not yet on duty. He very much enjoyed the period between five-thirty and seven-thirty AM. It meant the two of them could discuss things in private, or remain isolated as the other allowed.

He hadn't yet asked her opinion on this case. Technically, it wasn't even his jurisdiction; he merely had the misfortune of supervising it from an unbiased perspective. It fascinated him, in a dark fashion, due to the inherent motives involved. He had obviously heard of trying to bring the dead back to life, but circumventing human transmutation in the name of enslaving bodies? It was an idealistic nightmare.

Riza looked at him, concerned. She must have seen the dark circles under his eyes, the groggy quality of his complexion, the unwashed hair clinging to his skull like wet leaves. She interpreted the fatigue as stress and disturbed conscience, but that wasn't it. Not really. "Do you want my perspective, sir?"

"On what?" He feigned ignorance with little effort. He wanted to hear it and she would say it eventually.

She went back to her paperwork, gentle and precise. The scritch-scratch of an ink pen in her delicate fingers soothed even the most afflictive migraine. "Have you considered sexual motives?"

Of course he had. But that was a stretch beyond logic and into the realm of the macabre. There was no evidence to indicate sexual interests, but perhaps that was because the perpetrators had not yet been successful in whatever it was they were trying to do. Alchemists had done far worse, he supposed, in the name of fulfilling carnal propensities. Like the man Edward and Alphonse had impaled in self-defense - the man who had attempted to bind a child's soul to a lifeless doll.

"Why would anyone want to have sex with the dead?" he asked, more to himself than to her. It was a rhetorical question. He didn't deny that it happened, inadvertently or no. Back in Ishbal, he had stumbled upon a lot of really terrible scenes, some bloodier and messier than others. It wasn't uncommon to discover rape and murder gone wrong, but the soldiers didn't care; how could they care? When their reality burned around them?

Riza understood that he didn't want her to answer. But she did anyway, as was her custom. "I don't think it's a matter of attraction so much as it's a lack of fight," she said softly, bundling a stack of papers with string and stashing it inside a yellow envelope. "With the dead, there is no chance of rejection. There is no free will. It's disgusting, to be sure, but...you of all people should know that a desire for control can be confused for lust."

"Or come alongside it," he agreed, wondering why she had targeted him specifically. Unless she was talking about Edward. In which case, she was right. All sexual deviance was comparable, and all of it could be tied to one thing: control. What Tucker had done and what the necromancers were doing was not so very different. Even more reason to hide it from the victim. "I want Fullmetal off this case."

"Have you talked to Major Hughes about it?" Hawkeye asked, disregarding the abrupt change in subject.

"I have, but he wouldn't listen. Seemed to think Ed would be the best fit for infiltration." He rubbed his eyes hard, until he could see spots in his vision. Then he just sighed, miserably accepting the creak of aging bones. "I know he would, of course. He's done it well enough before, he's used to the worst kinds of evil; but as his legal benefactor I can't stomach the thought of him running into hell again."

"The major cares for him as well," Riza reminded him. "He won't have made this decision lightly."

"I don't question Hughes' judgment," Roy said. "I know that, unlike me, he wouldn't risk the Elrics in the faith that it will bring a situation to a close. He's not like that. But I do feel that he's underestimating Ed's mental health. That's all." He leaned back in his seat, opened a drawer, and readied the files Maes had asked him to forward to Ed. It was ominously thick, crackling and heavy. He slipped his book inside the main folder, in the hopes it would shed some light on the case for Ed. The boy wouldn't read it.

In a fitting turn of events, not more than a few minutes later a distinctive knock echoed around the office. Metal on the sturdy grain of lumber.

"Come in."

Ed shuffled in unceremoniously, loose blond hair tucked into the black hood he wore. The contrast of bright blond with all-black attire had always been shocking, at first glimpse, but Roy had become so accustomed to it he would have felt odd if Ed wore anything else. Ed was unique in that he could retain a gravitational attractiveness dressing the way he did, especially in the untidy methods he clothed himself. He didn't have a care in the world, but was objectively beautiful.

The sixteen-year-old took his usual stance in front of the colonel's desk, hands shoved in his pockets, golden eyes lined in black. He had abandoned the bravado of his earlier entrances, either because Alphonse was no longer around to boost his self-esteem or because he had developed a strangled apathy about the nature of daily discourse.

Roy hated to say it, but Ed was indeed perfect for the task: he was damaged, lonely, and insincere.

He handed him the report, flinching when the weight left his own hands. It represented much more than Roy cared to endorse. "The mission summary is inside," he said, watching as the blond perused the files. His expression remained static, like an old photograph. "There are also crime scene pictures, autopsy reports of the deceased victims involved, data, and miscellaneous evidence. Did Major Hughes debrief you?"

"Said something about it in the car," Ed said offhandedly, intent on the investigative contents. "I'm supposed to go in here and - what? Find some book or something?"

"Ideally," Roy said, well aware that Hawkeye was eavesdropping and entirely indifferent to it, "but let's not pretend it's going to happen. The Necronomicon, as I understand it, has several false copies in circulation. It's not going to be on the bestseller list. The best way to investigate this is to get involved with someone tied to the necromancers, and get as much information as possible."

Ed smirked with a dangerous, impish glint in his eyes. He was a two-sided coin, golden but unpredictable. "Like, sexually involved?"

"If that was a joke, I'm not amused," Roy said, glaring at him. He hadn't a clue why Ed said crap like that, especially since he was struggling through serious matter along a similar vein. "Your target is the occult bookstore Hughes showed you a few days ago. Innocuous and legal. They have nothing to fear, and nothing to hide. You go in, you turn on your brain, you make a few contacts, you leave. Is that understood?"

"So, basically I'm scoring phone numbers."

Roy nodded, breathing deep to avoid yelling at him. Despite his tight control, he was tempted to slap Ed in the face. "In few words, yes. That's what you'll be doing." He reached forward, laying a tender hand on Ed's wrist until he grasped the boy's divided attention. "Be careful," he warned quietly. Ed's eyes searched his, and for once, his mouth stayed shut. "These people are unpredictable. We don't know who they are or what they want. Just be smart about it."

Ed nudged him away and slid the papers haphazardly back into the mission folder. "You don't gotta worry about me. I know a lot about the dead and the ones that'd wanna mess with them."

"Good," Roy said, unable to keep from feeling concerned about Ed's vulnerable state. The kid wasn't delicate, but he was flawed, like a steel plate that had one too many cracks. It would be easy for Ed to be lulled into the group, as a victim or as an accessory. After all Ed had been through, the pull of sex and decay might be too much for him to resist or overcome. Ed would not fare well in prison. "Then you'll understand why I'm sending Lieutenant Havoc as back-up."

"What?" Ed snapped, all the color bleeding from his face. "This isn't even a murder case, it's vandalism at worst. Mustang, I don't need a fucking _bodyguard._"

"Yes, you do," Roy corrected, pushing himself to his full height. His voice strained to resemble vocal carbon. "You are stupid and impulsive and under the influence of several anxiety medications. If you run into a problem, mental or physical, you will be helpless against any threats. You will not risk your life any more than you will risk this mission. Do you understand me?"

"Fuck-"

"Do you understand, major?"

Ed's eyes narrowed and a breath of air hissed through his teeth. "Yeah," he muttered, "I understand."

* * *

><p>The little shop was not what Ed had expected, and the lieutenant mirrored his shrug when they entered the bell-rigged door. A light, spicy scent was in the wood itself, sweetened by incense. Liquid for potpourri, sticks to burn, grit in glass jars to place in small clay pots. The shelves were full of books, none of them particularly foreboding: "The Healing Power of Crystals," "The Zion Book of Spells," "Astral Projection for the Newly Initiated."<p>

Prayer candles and hemp and bundles of sage lent to a strangely airy atmosphere. There were Xingese talismans, jade, crystals and stones in glass cases, prices ranging from a few cenz to well over a thousand. There were scrolls littered in oriental characters and diagrams representing chakra or the 'inner eye.' Shopping bags had been forfeit for earth-friendly cloth sacks.

"Not much of a cult," Ed whispered, hunching his shoulders and browsing the shelves. "Where's the blood and virgin sacrifice?" He stopped as the spine of a book caught his eye, and pulled it out to scan the cover. It was a book of white 'magic,' with circles pulled from standard alchemy textbooks and modified so that they wouldn't actually do anything. The purposes were vague.

Jean peered at it from over his shoulder. "Seems harmless to me," he said, his warm breath ghosting on Ed's ear. Ed shuddered, putting the book back where it belonged. He ignored the sick but addictive writhe of his internal organs, the way he craved touch, and reiterated the mission in his head.

"It _is_ harmless," Ed said. "This whole pseudo-witch thing started once alchemy got popular. The people who couldn't transmute - like you or Winry - started a religion out of envy. If you research the authors of these books, I'm betting you'll find they're actually alchemists who mess with the circles on purpose to keep some moron from accidentally transmuting."

"Accidentally?"

"Some people are capable of transmutation, but don't realize it until they activate a circle by mistake," Ed explained. It was the equivalent of throwing a bunch of chemicals in a pot and hoping for the best. "Better safe than sorry. I remember reading about alchemy in elementary school. Wasn't until later I realized the example circles were all incomplete, to keep kids from setting their desks on fire and whatnot."

Havoc went his own way, tapping the glass of display shelves and wrinkling his forehead at exaggerated depictions of phallic symbols. Edward raked the library, thumbing the spines, sometimes getting caught up in a paragraph or two. The ideas and concepts were certainly interesting, despite their lack of factual evidence. He didn't understand why people invented their own world instead of studying the real one, but he suspected it was lack of satisfaction in reality.

To be honest, he wasn't even sure what he was looking for. This place, however strange and unearthly, didn't appear to have any evil ideologies. Most of the items claimed to repel evil, in fact, though that implied that it existed: that there was something the adherents were fighting. If there was white magic, that meant there had to be black magic.

"Excuse me," a rough, female voice said coolly.

He looked up, blinking rapidly, at the employee who seemed to have appeared from the frigid air. Her hair was pulled up, like his, though the resemblance ended there. She looked to be in her forties, though she held an air of youth about her, and her body was shapely enough. He acknowledged, with a pang of embarrassment, that she was taller, though certainly not unattractive.

She offered a false smile, a side effect of retail. "Looking for something in particular?" He couldn't help but notice the winding, tacky barbed wire tattoo that ran in a spiral down her neck and around her body like a snake. He could tell from the way it dipped down the front of her shirt and appeared again just beneath the navel. She didn't seem to care about modesty.

Moreover, neither did he.

"Kinda. Everything here's all about healing and protecting your home and shit," he said, waving a hand at the store. "I was on your webpage a few days ago and there was a book I was looking for." He watched her expression carefully, wondering if he should be worried about giving too much away. If she saw him as a threat, he and Jean would be kicked out, and the mission would be forfeit.

"What subject?" she asked, shifting her weight to the other side of her body. She clicked something against her teeth; a tongue piercing.

He kept his eyes level with hers. "Black magic," he said confidently, letting no hint of trepidation infect his tone. He remembered what Mustang had said. "Necromancy, to be specific."

She just clicked her tongue again, quiet and contemplative. The pause unnerved him, however brief. "Come with me," she said, turning and walking with purpose towards the back of the store. They passed several racks of exotic and mystical goods, as well as customers of every demographic, before reaching a doorway with a sheet pulled over it.

"This where you hide your mature paraphernalia?" He thought of video stores and the illicit pornography hidden in the shadows of back rooms.

She just scowled at him, shoving aside the drapery. "Black magic's got a stigma even in the occult community, but nothing in here is illegal. Amestris allows you to practice whatever religion you want. It may not be conventional but we take it just as seriously as your theistic, militant bullshit."

He followed her into the room. It was much darker than the light space he had only recently occupied, and the smell was a lot mustier. No incense or candles here, just the dim buzz of fluorescent lights, and shelves upon shelves of darker stock. Taxidermy, sacrificial knives, allegedly cursed medallions, and real human skulls lined the walls and tables. Placards claimed they'd been plucked from the battlefields of Ishbal, and a sign on the wall read: For decorative purposes only.

It, too, was more normal than he expected it to be, which was a bit of a disappointment. "You sure there's no back-back room?" he called over his shoulder, but the woman didn't humor him with anything but a coarse scowl. "All right, all right. Just tell me what's what. Like I said, just interested in the dead, don't necessarily know anything about it." He tapped one of the skulls, shuddering a bit at the cold that had seeped through the smooth bone.

She sighed impatiently, and dragged him by the elbow to a small bookshelf. "Alphabetically ordered by title. You looking to raise the dead, talk to spirits, curse someone, give an ex the clap? Consider these your ten-step instruction manuals. What's your beef? What's your motive, pretty boy?" She clicked her tongue, and he felt her eyes, like fire, taking in his body and burning it alive.

It was a struggle to form words. He didn't know what to say. "I want to know about ghosts," he said pathetically, drawing from his own experiences as Hughes had suggested. The alley, the basement, the bedroom, the sewer. "Talk to them, maybe, ask them questions. If they can even hear that kind of thing." He was aware that he had bastardized the realm of science by assuming _they _even existed, but that was a mere afterthought.

She dragged a long, painted fingernail down the spines of the book collection (he wondered what it would feel like on his skin), and then pulled a copy out. It had a slightly tattered cloth cover, and yellowing pages. Ed estimated it had to be a few decades old, given the type of print and paper.

"This work for you?" she asked, holding it up for him to see.

He barely glanced at it before taking it from her, his head down. "Yeah, sure. Thanks."

She gave him a strange look, and leaned back against the wall with her arms folded across her chest. She wouldn't stop tapping her tongue. It seemed a thousand clicks went by before she finally spoke again. "I'm interested in necromancy, too," she admitted, her forehead furrowing. She paused, shifting her weight to the other foot. Ed noticed her nervousness; a nervousness that hadn't been there a few minutes before. "You come here alone today, kid?"

He nodded his head, deciding not to vocalize the lie. He'd never been good at that.

She made the same movement, but she kept her eye contact disengaged. Her skin started to glisten with sweat, from the unfettered heat of the back room or from some powerful emotion. Her fine, dark hair was starting to escape its tie. "You gotta be fifteen or something, right?"

"Seventeen, actually," he corrected, not entirely sure what was going on. Three magic syllables lightened her mood, and he realized what she was brawling with. He had seen such ambivalence before, and had learned to detect it; that indecision, that gnawing guilt, that ate away at people when they found themselves infatuated with the forbidden fruits of youth. One birthday had changed that, and he was fair game.

"Right," she went on, posture a little straighter from neoteric confidence, "you see, every now and then, my friends and I have this...party. We drink and we watch some movies on a little portable television set and generally just have a good time. Praying. At the Brownstone Cemetery. You know where that is?"

"It's by the lake."

"Very good. Since you're new to this whole thing, and you seem to be a good kid. You wanna come along?" She raised dark eyebrows at him, inquisitive but honest. Unlike many other people he'd met in his lifetime, she didn't set his skin crawling with imaginary insects. No skeletons in her closet. Either his intuition was malfunctioning, or he'd finally found someone he could trust. "It's alright if you don't. No sense in hanging out with an old lady like me."

"You're not old," he offered hesitantly, noticing the brightness that overtook her aged face when he said it. Her shoulders straightened themselves out and she smiled a bit. He wasn't sure if that was a mistake or not, just prattled onward for the sake of her number. "I mean, you're. You know, you're pretty for you age. But not in a fake way."

"You're sweet," she said. She was quiet for a moment, eyes drifting off to the walls and the savage constructs adorning them. Pale bones, silver coffers, the rugged blades of ceremonial knives worn down by the presence of dust and decay. Her lips were so full and red, like smashed roses or old wine. "You go pay for that book, honey. If you're up for it, I'll see you at that cemetery tonight. Eleven o'clock by the Lady's Fountain."

Ed nodded, the soft quality of her voice bending his back in shivers. He tried to leave, but it called out to him again, lucid as droplets of rain and just as hard to sustain oneself with.

"Oh, and honey?"

He stopped, looked back. She crossed her legs one over the other as she stood, knee at a trajectory. The line pointed towards him, a rabbit in the deep bush grove. She was the hunter.

"Wear black."

* * *

><p>The lake stank of fish and rot. It had stopped its reign as a tourist spot about four decades ago, when the smog and debris from Central's factories overwhelmed it and turned it to acid. Few could see the stars on dark nights, just the faint green haze of smoke and stench. Now, this had happened, and Maes was sure the local news networks would be all over it, much to the ire of military and park officials.<p>

Mustang had been right about one thing. The necromancers were trying to prolong the lifespan of reanimated corpses, for interminably foggy reasons. Moreover, they had started inserting real souls in the equation: not human ones, not yet, but innocent lives were being sacrificed and it was only a matter of time before the necromancers plowed full-speed into the realm of human slaughter.

Maes walked along the lake's sandbar, boots digging deep in the moist earth. Animal carcasses had washed up on the shore, and more of the creatures' bodies had been found littering upturned graves in the cemetery nearby. Normally, wild predators would have been suspected, perhaps a flux in the wolf population. But these animals - badgers, raccoons, rats, birds, even domestic dogs and cats - had been tortured, their throats slit, the blood left to stain their carcasses in congealed clumps.

The area had been roped off for the investigation, though Maes thought it unnecessary. The lake stopped getting visitors eons ago, probably why it had been selected as a target.

He plucked his cell phone from his pocket, and dialed Roy's number with cold fingers. He would want to hear about the latest development, as Ed was directly involved now. He didn't regret putting Ed in charge of infiltration, but now that violence was fair game, measures would need to be taken for the kid's safety. "Patch me through to Colonel Mustang."

The secretary obeyed the command, and soon his friend's voice was on the line.

"Major, any news?"

"Bloody news," Maes said, stealing a glance at the pile of soggy bodies on the beach. A handful of animal specialists had been called in to perform autopsies, and they melded awkwardly with professionals more used to human corpses. "You called it. Found about a hundred animal carcasses on the shore of Crag's Lake today. The alchemists in my jurisdiction think they were trying to bind the souls to human bodies."

Roy cursed under his breath, loud enough for Maes to hear. "That's practically a goddamn massacre, major. Any pets involved?"

"A few domestic dogs and cats, some with tags," Maes said regretfully. "Unfortunately I don't think it worked. We don't have any witness accounts, of course, but the human bodies we found out of their graves were stone cold this morning. If the necromancers succeeded, it wasn't for very long."

"How many disturbed graves this time?" Roy asked, voice ground tight with emotion. Maes knew how much the man sympathized for all creatures, and was aware of how intoxicatingly frustrating this whole case was. It was possible that murder would be the next development. The bastards might try animals for a while, but knowing their luck, it would be futile.

"Four," he answered, counting them off in his head. "All belonged to girls recently deceased. Ages nine to twenty. They died within an average of four days ago." He hesitated, letting those facts swarm like angry gnats in his friend's head. "You realize the implications this has?"

"I realize them, but I don't want to think about them. I'll talk to Ed and Havoc. They should be returning from the bookstore soon, and they need to know how dangerous this has gotten." Roy sighed, and Maes felt honestly sorry for him. Ed would need to be told, but depending on what the kid had found out on his own time, it might be impossible to keep him in one place. He could be tempted to wander off alone, and that was definitely a bad idea.

"Keep an eye on him," Maes said. "If your theory's correct, these people are going to get angry and they're going to get desperate. They're running out of options. If anyone gets in the way, they're not going to hesitate to try using that person in their fucked-up science."

"I've been hoping Ed would have the common sense to stay out of it," Roy said darkly. "Then again, that's a fool's hope. He's an impulsive idiot at the best of times." He removed the phone from the proximity of his mouth, and gave orders to his men. Maes couldn't hear them, though he did hear an affirmative bark from Hawkeye. "They have night patrol at that cemetery, don't they?"

"Just two groundskeepers. The police are sending a few of their own to help keep watch tonight. Hopefully they'll see something." He looked off across the fog-addled waters, where dark fir trees gathered in solemn darkness. "This cemetery's huge, though. About fifty acres, and possibly further if you count the lake and forest. The old graveyard stretches twenty feet into the pine grove."

"Keep the guards near the recently buried," Roy ordered, conveying tight-lipped control. "They're targeting the fresh dead, so they're our priority. Naturally it's going to be difficult; a lot of those plots are grouped by family relations."

"The civilian police are responsible. They can run a tight ship. I'll contribute a few men for the sake of covering more ground; can you lend any?"

"Officer Falman and Sergeant Fuery have already volunteered," Roy informed him. "They'll be there as soon as Ed and my lieutenant are back."

* * *

><p>They passed the Tucker estate on the way to Central HQ. Jean had forgotten it was there, in some ridiculous semblance of irresponsibility, and apologized swiftly as they drove past the crumbling mansion. But the damage was done. Ed couldn't help but stare at it, in its haunted elegance. Glass had exploded and rained down on a dead lawn. The drapes in the windows were intact, blackened cloth whispering in a cold breeze, and he could see the remnants of furniture, plaster, collapsed ceilings.<p>

The burned state of the place lent to the idea that it had never happened. That it had been a nightmare, dreamed up one night in the midst of a hot fever. Anger hardened his heart. His ghosts and his memories were still there, still locked inside that dusty decaying shell, and they had burned alive. All thanks to Mustang.

Images swirled in his psyche. Gray, black, and green. Nina's braided hair, her light laughter, the way she'd scream as she was tickled or chased down long, gleaming hallways. Dust in sunlight. Alphonse hulking in the background, innocent contrast. He remembered a familiar blond head. Smaller, younger, happier but not happy. And the shadows crept out of the memories, tugged him down. Shou Tucker, smirking as his child played, smirking as he raked his hands along Ed's body.

He didn't like it. Stop stop stop stop stop.

I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

"Ed," Jean interrupted his chaos, concerned with the road but distracted by the blond in the passenger's seat. "Ed, you're mumbling under your breath. You're okay, you know that? You're alright."

Ed shrank back, letting the rumble of the car bump him back into reality. He felt the words in his head, not on his lips, yet he must have been saying them or Jean (a facet and permanent part of reality) wouldn't have heard. "I'm sorry," he said absently, trying to link nightmare and daydream together, "I just really hate it when people do things 'cause they think they're doing what's best for me, you know? They don't know."

Jean's mouth was a thin, thin line. Ed could smell him, even from the other side of the car.

_I'mfreakingoutagainpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tsomeone'scryingshe_

"The fuck do you mean I can't work on this mission?" Ed snapped. There was another fork in his hand, but this time its purpose was more than obvious. Gracia had cooked linguini, with a side of toasted bread smeared with garlic butter. It smelled delicious but it hung heavy on his tongue like glue. Elysia stared at him and for the first time in his life, he wanted to hit her and make her feel as small as he did.

"You got a phone call today," Hughes said, eyebrows drawn down over his eyes. He looked disgusted, as if he could scarcely stomach his food, and yet he shoveled pasta in his mouth anyway. Gracia was quiet, a delicate eater and a delicate listener. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. "You have any idea what they said? About you?"

Ed shrugged, feeling his face darken red. Like cherries but cherries tasted sweeter. "Who was it?" he asked.

"They said their name was Ryan. Sound familiar?" It didn't, so Ed shook his head. Maes paused, angry and disappointed, and then carried on like his confusion his thoughts his feelings his traumas didn't matter. "I deleted them. The messages. There were about - let's say six or seven. Really angry and bitter towards the end. Apparently, this guy really likes you. Or perhaps more accurately, likes the prescription drugs you shared last night."

"I didn't-"

"Maybe you didn't realize it," Maes said, in interrogation mode. He was _pissed off_ but controlled his anger. That made him more dangerous. Ed flinched. "Maybe you thought it was a good idea at the time. Whatever the case, Ed, you put yourself in an extremely dangerous situation. This person threatened you. In a pretty colorful manner, I might add. Needless to say, he's been taken care of, but I'm not satisfied. This is exactly the kind of thing I've been trying to warn you about."

Ed shook his head but he didn't know what he was disagreeing with. He just wanted it all to go away. Everything in the world, everything that existed, was stupid and pointless. Except for the silverware on the table. It was pretty; it was sharp. "I don't even know how he got your number. I'd never tell anyone..."

"He read the information off your prescription bottle," Maes said, setting his fork down in a meticulous manner. He clasped his hands, elbows on the table. "Ed, this is bad. This is really bad. If he wanted to, he could've figured out your address and kidnapped you."

"So let him, I don't care."

"What is wrong with you?" Maes asked, incredulous. He didn't understand. "Do you want to get hurt? You think we want to see you get hurt?"

"Yeah, maybe I do," Ed growled, and then excused himself from the table. He scraped his plate and dumped it in the sink, angry and belittled and scared and overwhelmed. All of those pieces of reality - Ryan, the pills, the sex, the house rotting a few streets away - were like pieces of someone else's reality, a horror story he could just put down and ignore when it got to be too much. The train was back and it was _zooming _through his head, through his head, through his head, through his head-

They don't fucking understand how could they understand Elysia doesn't know let it happen to her or something maybe then you'd understand how hard it is to focus to be strong to be weak I'm not weak I'm not weak I'm not weak and I hate you so fucking much I hate me so fucking much and I swear if you come up these stairs if you open that door if you sit next to me on this bed and touch me and tell me it's all going to be okay I'm going to scream and I'm going to kill you.

He waited.

And no one came up the stairs, or opened the door, or sat next to him on the bed. This disappointed him, and relieved him. He hugged his arms to his chest and relived dinner in his head, over and over again, over and over again, until his teeth were chattering and all the anger turned inside out. He had wanted to hurt Elysia, and he would _never _hurt Elysia. She was his little sister.

(So was Nina.)

He threw his pillow at the door, just to make a noise, just to do something violent. It hit the wood with a muffled thud and fell to the floor, undamaged. Unhurt.

He lay down on the bed. Counted to one-hundred. His face was wet, but he wouldn't say why. Counted to one-hundred again. Dissected the periodic tables, its rules and its functions. Thought of pretty women, pretty men. Curves and musculature. Aesthetic and use. So pointless. Shallow, even. He didn't understand. He felt sick, to think of other people that way. He should be thinking of other things. Like math. Or alchemy.

Or necromancy.

He opened his eyes. For a second, the ceiling was blurry from tears and sleeplessness. He dug around under the bed for the book the woman had given him. Got a good look at the title: _Ghosts of the Living. _Intriguing. An hour passed. It shared its stories, he cleared his head. This world was false and yet he felt it more potently than his reality. A woman suffered a miscarriage, but could hear herself crying years after the fact. A man suffered a stroke in his home, and saw his own apparitions.

Fairy tales, he thought once he'd finished. He threw the book against the wall. It clattered and broke, pages scattering like dead moths.

Downstairs, it was quiet. Blue light from the television set filled the living room, cold and unfeeling. He recognized the person sitting on the living room sofa, but wasn't sure why they were there. He was slipping, but not into darkness; this was hotter, intense. His head felt too light. It was going to pull his body up towards the ceiling if he didn't find something to ground them.

He sat on the couch by Lieutenant Havoc, glaring at what was on TV. The words spoken on screen slipped through his ears, an alien language by alien people. He could feel body heat, warmth, could smell familiarity. This was nostalgia, he supposed, or something else.

"Why are you here?" he asked.

The lieutenant didn't take his eyes off the program. He was leaning his head against his fist, bored and tired but awake. "Major Hughes is supervising the night watch up at the cemetery," he said, yawning. "Asked me to stay here to watch over you kids. Gracia's asleep."

Watch over? Goddamn it. It was as if Hughes didn't trust him around his real family; thought he might do something stupid, probably. Kill them, kill himself, kill everyone, kill everything, every grain and speck of atom that composed the universe so cold and cruel and relentless.

"Havoc," he said, quietly. He could feel the dark bruises under his eyes, symptoms of insomnia. The man looked at him, but his gaze was parental, at best. A gaze that made Ed's insides twist up in stimulation that felt wonderful and terrible and foul. It was like before in the bookstore. "I don't feel good."

Jean reached over and laid the back of his hand across his forehead. The contact made Ed tremble, and he wanted - he needed more of that contact, more of that heat. A flash of memory. So many years ago. Blond hair, a darker gold than his own, and glasses, and innocent touch. He wanted touch, he didn't care how he got it, he didn't care who touched him for what reason. So long as it was intense and full of _emotion_. Even the hurting kind.

"I'm so confused," he whispered, as Jean helped him lay down. He wanted hands on him, he wanted to be slapped and beaten and kicked, he wanted someone to rip his hair out, he wanted someone to kiss him so hard he suffocated and writhed.

"Why are you confused?" the lieutenant asked patiently, smoothing down Ed's hair. He withdrew immediately, leaving Ed feeling cold and disoriented. Maybe he needed more pills. Pills were real good at making him feel warm; all those hot flashes pushing vomit up his throat and sweat out his facial pores.

"Come here."

Jean looked shortly confused. He shifted closer, but maintained that infuriatingly appropriate distance. Ed didn't want it to be appropriate. He wanted it to be disturbing, wrong, even. No one else was awake. No one else could see what happened in the dark. He could depend on that. He could depend on knowing that no one saw what happened in the dark. Ever.

Ed touched his hand, lightly with his fingertips, and then trailed them up his arm to his shoulder. His broad, cotton-covered shoulder, firm as rock. Dependable as rock. There was no reaction. Jean was under the impression that he was too far-gone, too vague to understand the connotations of touch. The lieutenant was a good man who, like so many others, didn't _want _him.

"You okay?" Jean asked calmly. He smelled good, he smelled like wheat and coffee and tobacco and cologne and home. That home. Yes. So far away.

Ed shrugged, though his eyes stung. "I'm fine."

But he was still shaking, bones and limbs encased in cold ice. Liquid nitrogen for blood. And there was only one thing, one action, one movement, which could stop his head from jerking his body into space. Keep it from vibrating into orbit. Impulse drove him forward, into heady warmth, led him to the idea that his body was a tool so seldom used for its intended purpose-

He was pushed back, but it was a benign kind of pushing, not violent, not brutal. Dispassionate. Jean said nothing. And Ed didn't say anything either. He felt tears leak out from the corners of his eyes and his jaw trembled as he tried to force words out, any words. There were no words. For what he'd just done. He'd crossed the boundaries; he'd just obliterated the boundaries. The lines.

Shadows. Circles. Shapes.

"I'm sorry," Ed said. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I did that. Please, I'm so sorry."

Havoc nodded, slowly. "Go to bed, Ed." His eyes were unfocused, but not glazed over. There was no lust there. Disorientation, yes. Melancholy, yes. He was beginning to understand how infectious this madness was. This disturbed state of consciousness, the tender stems of brain so easily triggered. "You're not in trouble, just go to bed."

"I'm so sorry," Ed repeated, strangling the urge to reach out and touch him again. He didn't even feel anything for him, he was just there, he was a warm body, he was capable of certain biological functions. And Ed wanted to _feel_. "Please don't tell anyone."

Jean looked at him, and an emotion wrote itself across his eyes. But it was nameless and in the breadth of a millisecond, it had disappeared. "I don't think I can. Just forget about it. Okay? It didn't happen. Nothing happened. Alright?"

Ed nodded, grabbing one of the couch pillows to hold against his aching stomach as he trekked up the stairs, as he burrowed in his wardrobe, as he chose his blackest black, as he flung the doors shut, as he opened the window, as he jumped down off the roof, as he walked in the cold mist of night towards stranger darkness.

* * *

><p>When he arrived at the cemetery, there were police traipsing the grounds, combing it thoroughly for trespassers. Their flashlight beams were golden in the night, revealing gravestones as varied as the corpses they marked. Stones etched with prayers, with quotations, with cartoon teddy bears, shaped like crosses or ellipses. So beautiful, so quiet, so lonely. It all came back to loneliness. Ed loved the dead.<p>

He climbed over a low-lying wall, and clung to it as he walked. He could smell the lake, the stench of mold, decay, of deep drenched places. Cold wind nipped his face, chapping it red, and he made an effort to keep from sniffling back mucus and cough. Dead grasses crunched beneath his feet, but the officers were tired and more concerned with sights than with sounds.

He had dressed in black.

He wasn't stupid. He knew the necromancers and his new 'friend' were the same. He knew - of course, he knew. But such details could be ignored. No, Mustang, no one there knew anything about anything. Ask Havoc. The place was as suspicious as a toy store. You could breathe there. I'm sorry I disappointed you, again, but I promise - it'll be the last time. The last time.

He concluded they'd be closer to the lake, given where the animal carcasses had been found last time. He had a hunch that the woman and her cronies would stick to the edge of the pine forest, near the more ancient graves belonging to Central's first citizens. They'd be useless for corpse raising, but the area would be perfect as a hideaway. A nice place to sip and talk and think.

Ed would ask the necromancers questions; he would ask questions, and discuss things if importance, like his ghosts and their boundaries, and then he would catch them in the act of - whatever it was they were doing, and he'd be rewarded as a hero. He'd be a hero. And Alphonse would come back to him, Alphonse would _come back_, and Ed wouldn't be ignored, he wouldn't be treated as a criminal. He'd be loved again.

The closer he got to the lake and the forest, the harder his heart pounded. He saw light through the trees, dim and cold, and heard voices; merry, but severe, like the creak of old trees in autumn wind. He breathed hot air on his hands, stretched his sleeves further over his wrists. Damn cold, damn cold.

He saw her first. She was sitting on a crumbling headstone with ivy wrapped around the base, and she was smoking a pipe. The smoke clouded up her face and made the few gray threads of her hair stand out. Three men sat next to her, huddled around a portable television. They were bundled up in layers of coats and rags, scraggly beards on their faces and cheap beer bottles in their hands. He didn't catch what they were watching, because she noticed his presence.

"Hey, it's you!" she exclaimed, stumbling as she sought to get up. She was drinking something a lot stronger than beer, but her embrace was welcome for its warmth. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders, and held her bottle up to get the men's attention. "Yo, this is that kid I was telling you all about. The one that wants to know about ghosts."

"Fascinating, Veronica," one of the men said coldly, turning up the volume on the television set. He glanced at Ed and the woman passively, and then took a swig of his beer. "Least he's cute. The last guy you brought in here _I_ could've scored, and I'm not even into dick."

"Bullshit you aren't," another man said, kicking the stump he sat on. He half-crawled over to Veronica, and held out a hand for Ed to take. Which he did - reluctantly. Out of politeness. "Welcome to the party. I'm Samuel, that's Pat, the faggot sitting here next to me is Winston. And you've met Veronica, of course. What's your name?"

Ed said nothing.

Veronica saved him from having to. "He's new, you guys, he's new. Leave him alone." She offered Ed a drink of her liquor, but he just shook his head. Not that he didn't want to be hammered now. He just didn't trust her, not really. Not any of them. "When's Carter going to get his ass in gear? It's gotta be half past one. I want to get this over with, I really do."

"We're trying something else tonight," Winston said, expression grim. "He's got to...do some shit, should take him another hour. We've got some time to mingle before the, you know." He nodded his head at a black bag. It was ripped and torn in more than a few places. "Kid, you like movies?"

Ed edged closer to the portable television. The screen quality was grainy and discolored, the sound a little grating on the ears, but he could tell what was going on. The film was dark, shadowed and only had one camera angle. There was an old mattress on a concrete floor, and he could practically feel the cold bleeding out from his body. The hard shape of a tall, built man, and the unconscious forms of two kids on the bed, bound and gagged-

He thought he was going to throw up. "The hell are you watching?" he grated out, fists trembling at his side. His voice echoed around the graveyard, the cold dome of air that surrounded them.

Winston grunted, indicating the screen with the neck of his beer bottle. "Snuff. You like it?"

Like it? This - this was - "_What the hell are you watching_?"

Veronica squeezed his wrist, gently, giving him a warm smile. "Winston, turn it off. You're making the kid uncomfortable." The man shook his head, cursing something foul, but gave in to her demands with the click of a button. Disappointed growls emitted from the rest of the group. "Don't be scared, honey," she said to Ed. "It's innocent. It's not real."

"How is it not..." But he wasn't going to question them. He let Veronica lead him away from the men, towards the shadow of two trees that protected a cluster of old graves. The names etched on the stone were archaic, dry as the bones beneath them. "I just don't understand how people can get off on that stuff, you know, I just don't..."

She...

She was kissing him.

She had pushed him up against the gnarled, rough trunk of a tree, long-nailed fingers scrabbling at his clothes and face and neck. Her tongue was in his mouth and she tasted like cigarettes and bourbon and maternal wetness. He made a sincere effort to kiss back, but his eyes were on the moon, not closed or focused on her face. Not her face.

She smelled like death and old woman's perfume.

When she reached down his pants, he gasped and his hands closed on her forearms, pushing her away. He just stood there, panting for what seemed like too long a time, as she stared patiently back. Too patient, she was much too patient. "Wait," he said, trying to catch his breath. Stress. Stress was pulsing in his blood, everything felt wrong, and everything felt right. "I can't, I can't do this."

"You a virgin, honey?" she asked sweetly, giving him another quick, moist kiss. "It's okay, baby, we can go slow. I've taught more than a few kids a thing or two."

"No, I just..." He squeezed his eyes shut, struggling with the toxic mixture of desire and disgust flooding his system. He would've called it a small problem but it was kind of a huge problem and why the hell would anyone want someone so broken? He didn't want her, but he did, but he didn't, but he. Fuck. "I can't get, you know. I can't..."

She nodded, lips parted in understanding. "Ohhh," she said, eyes flashing down his body and back up again. Her tongue flicked out, the piercing glittering in moonlight. "I see. It's okay. God gave us mouths for a reason. I think I prefer it that way, anyway."


End file.
